Using idiosyncratic volatility as a proxy for arbitrage costs, the authors found that the highly publicized accrual and asset growth anomalies exist because of high barriers to arbitrage, occurring predominantly in the universe of stocks with higher arbitrage risks. Therefore, investors who seek...

We study the return predictive power of asset growth related measures in the MSCI World Universe, which includes all the developed markets. We find strong return predictive power of asset growth related measures in these markets. This power is particularly stronger for two-year total asset...

Real earnings management (REM) practices are related to subsequent stock returns. Specifically, stocks of firms with abnormally low (high) levels of operating cash flows underperform (outperform) in the subsequent year, whereas stocks of firms with abnormally low (high) levels of production...

We explore whether the well publicized anomalous returns associated with low-volatility stocks can be attributed to market mispricing or to compensation for higher systematic risk. Our results, conducted over a 46 year study period (1966-2011), indicate that the high returns related to...